The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

Leading Off

● ME-Gov, TX-Gov: Two of the Trumpiest names in politics just launched gubernatorial bids in a pair of very different states, raising the age-old question: Will either of them harm Republican chances in November of 2022? Or will they succeed in spite of their extremism and further the GOP’s devolution into the party of American authoritarianism?

One of the loudest mouths heralding this transformation belongs to former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, who likes to brag he was “Donald Trump before Donald Trump.” LePage’s penchant for Trump-style racism is best exemplified by comments from 2016, when he blamed the state’s drug problems on “guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” who “come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home” and “half the time, they impregnate a young white girl before they leave.” (He later claimed he meant to say “Maine women” instead of “white women,” though he in fact used the term “girl.")

For comparable thuggishness, you’ll need to scroll back just a year earlier, when LePage threatened to withhold $500,000 in funding for a state-approved charter school after it had hired state House Speaker Mark Eves, a Democrat, as its president. The school soon thereafter fired Eves, who sued LePage only to be told the governor was immune from such a lawsuit. (Three appellate judges did conclude, however, that LePage had violated Eves’ constitutional rights. He just had no legal remedy.)

Campaign Action

LePage served two terms as governor, winning with a plurality of the vote in both 2010 and 2014 thanks to the presence of left-leaning third-party candidates. He was succeeded by Democrat Janet Mills, whom he’s now hoping to replace. If he does manage to, he’ll be the first Maine governor to stage a successful comeback bid since 1841, when terms were one year long and a Whig was on the ballot.

Joining LePage on the campaign trail is very similar candidate seeking office at the other end of the country: former one-term Florida Rep. Allen West, who some years ago left the Sunshine State for Texas and is now challenging Gov. Greg Abbott in next year’s primary after a short stint as Texas state party chair. As with LePage, there are many examples we could feature from West’s lowlight reel. Most notoriously, while serving with the Army in Iraq in 2003, West fired his gun near the head of a detainee and threatened to execute him before allowing his troops to beat the man.

The incident led to West’s ouster from the military but predictably turned him into a celebrity on the right, propelling him to victory in what was then South Florida’s 22nd District during the 2010 tea party wave. While in office, he became known for outrageous rhetoric, like that time he declared that if Nazi propagandist “Joseph Goebbels was around, he’d be very proud of the Democrat Party, because they have an incredible propaganda machine.” That style of partisanship, however, helped Democrat Patrick Murphy kick West to the curb in a redrawn district in 2012, ending—for a time—his career in politics.

West moved to Texas in 2014 and dabbled there politically, often threatening to run for one post or another. In 2020, he finally did so when he was elected as chair of the state GOP, a position he held for less than a year before resigning ahead of his bid for governor last month. (During his short tenure, he suggested that his adoptive home state could try seceding from the union a second time.)

Now he’s part of a familiar story, positioning himself as the true embodiment of Trumpism even though the man he’s seeking to oust in the Republican primary, two-term Gov. Greg Abbott, actually has Trump’s endorsement. West is probably a longshot, but the looniest wing of the Texas GOP has bitterly complained about Abbott’s handling of the pandemic for pretty much the entire pandemic, and we have yet to see a test of this precise brand of furor in a real-world election.

One thing we do know is that gubernatorial elections are, even in this age, less polarized than contests for federal office: There are, for instance, 11 governors who serve states won by the opposite party’s presidential candidate in 2020 versus just six U.S. senators who can say the same thing—despite the fact that there are twice as many senators overall.

It’s therefore not unreasonable to think that a meaningful number of voters who might vote for an Abbott won’t vote for a West and could even back a Democrat instead. The same calculus may well hold in Maine, though there the choice is purely hypothetical, since LePage will undoubtedly clear the GOP field. Of course, the inverse might also be true, and both states could wind up with governors who represent the worst that theTrump-era Republican Party has to offer. After all, LePage has already won twice before, and no Republican has lost statewide in Texas since 1994—the longest such streak in the country.

2Q Fundraising

● AL-Sen: Katie Boyd Britt (R): $2.2 million raised

● GA-Sen: Latham Saddler (R): $1.4 million raised

● NC-Sen: Jeff Jackson (D): $700,000 raised

● PA-Sen: Jeff Bartos (R): $1 million raised

● AZ-02: Randy Friese (D): $565,000 raised

● CO-03: Lauren Boebert (R-inc): $750,000 raised; Kerry Donovan (D): $457,000 raised

● IA-01: Ashley Hinson (R-inc): $850,000 raised

● IA-03: Cindy Axne (D-inc): $700,000 raised, $1 million cash-on-hand

● MI-08: Elissa Slotkin (D-inc): $1 million raised, $3 million cash-on-hand

● NJ-07: Tom Malinowski (D-inc): $815,000 raised, $1.4 million cash on hand

Senate

● NC-Sen: Brunswick County Commissioner Marty Cooke, who filed paperwork for a possible Senate bid in May, has now joined the crowded GOP primary for the seat held by retiring Republican Sen. Richard Burr. The field already includes former Rep. Mark Walker, former Gov. Pat McCrory, and Rep. Ted Budd (who has Donald Trump’s endorsement), along with a host of lesser names.

● OH-Sen: Venture capitalist J.D. Vance, who’d been teasing a Senate bid for months, finally kicked off his campaign with an announcement just before the holiday weekend. Vance is best-known for his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which purported to explain to supposedly befuddled coastal elites the impulses of the disaffected rural white voters who cottoned to Donald Trump. While the book was greeted effusively by many liberals, others criticized it sharply; in the New Republic Sarah Jones called it “little more than a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class.”

More recently, Vance has emerged as a favorite project of his former boss, billionaire V.C. Peter Thiel, who dumped $10 million into a super PAC designed to support a Vance candidacy earlier this year. (Vance’s message in his book that “there is no government that can fix these problems for us”—speaking of Appalachia’s ills—perfectly suited Thiel’s laissez-faire hostility toward helping anyone left behind by corporate America’s predations.)

But while Vance (who left behind his life in small-town Ohio to attend Yale Law School and make his fortune) was only too happy to accept the mantle of Trump-whisperer, he didn’t actually vote for Trump in 2016 and tweeted that he was “reprehensible”—tweets he’s now deleted and says he regrets. But his many rivals for the GOP nomination won’t let him memory-hole those comments: Former state party chair Jane Timken blasted Vance for his incorrect level of Trump worship the moment he launched his campaign, and you can bet this this line of attack won’t let up.

● PA-Sen: Wealthy GOP donor Carla Sands, who served as Donald Trump’s ambassador to Denmark, has joined the busy Republican primary for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat after publicly weighing a bid for months. Earlier this year, Politico’s Anita Kumar described Sands as “a former socialite, B-list movie star and chiropractor” who used her official government Twitter account to retweet partisan political attacks—which the Office of Special Counsel concluded were a violation of the Hatch Act. The GOP field is already host to a number of notable names, including 2018 Lt. Gov. nominee Jeff Bartos and 2020 House candidate Sean Parnell.

● UT-Sen: Businesswoman Ally Isom, who’s been looking at a Senate bid since April, announced just prior to the Fourth of July weekend that she’d run in next year’s primary against Republican Sen. Mike Lee. Isom said she thinks her congressional voting record would align very closely with Lee’s but excoriated his Trump-esque rhetoric, saying, “The public dialogue has denigrated to a place of rancor and division and us-versus-them mentality that I think is actually really dangerous.”

Governors

● AL-Gov: State Auditor Jim Zeigler, who’s been considering a primary challenge to Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, says he’ll make a decision before the state GOP’s meeting in August.

● CA-Gov: Republican Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, who’s been considering running in the Sept. 14 recall election of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, announced on Tuesday that he’s joining the race. A whole bunch of semi-prominent Republicans are running, but as yet, no notable Democrats aside from Newsom himself are planning to be on the ballot.

● MI-Gov: Fox 2’s Tim Skubick reports that former state Attorney General Mike Cox is considering a possible bid for the GOP nomination to take on Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer next year. While there’s no comment from Cox himself, an unnamed “source familiar with his thinking” says he’d be reluctant to stand down from his case representing victims of the late University of Michigan athletic doctor Robert Anderson, though he could run if the case is settled.

● MA-Gov: Former Republican state Rep. and 2018 Senate nominee Geoff Diehl kicked off a bid Sunday for this seat. Diehl, who co-chaired Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign in the Bay State, served four terms in the state House before challenging Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2018, a battle Warren handily won 60-36. Diehl is the first Republican to launch a campaign, though Republican Gov. Charlie Baker is eligible to seek a third term next year. Baker, for his part, has remained quiet about his future plans.

● MD-Gov: Del. Dan Cox launched a campaign for governor on Sunday. Cox had previously filed paperwork with the state for a potential bid a few days before his actual launch. He becomes the second notable Republican to join the race, after state Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz.

Should Cox lead Team Red’s gubernatorial ticket next year, he would represent a sharp shift away from the relative moderation of incumbent GOP Gov. Larry Hogan, who is term-limited. Cox is a Trump loyalist who has parroted many bogus claims of fraud during the 2020 election. He also played a role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol by organizing a bus of people to attend the riot. During the height of the chaos that afternoon, Cox tweeted “Pence is a traitor.”

House

● GA-06: Army veteran Eric Welsh, who launched a campaign for the GOP nomination just two months ago, has now dropped his bid, citing the demands of his business. His departure leaves Republicans with one other notable candidate who also happens to be an Army veteran, Harold Earls, in the race to take on Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath. Earls, though, has said he might switch to the neighboring 7th District if Republicans make it redder in redistricting.

● NJ-03: Republican Assemblywoman Serena DiMaso isn’t ruling out a challenge to Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, according to a spokesperson who told the New Jersey Globe, “All things are possible.” DiMaso, however, is not on happy terms with the local GOP: Republican power-brokers in Monmouth County endorsed a challenger, Holmdel School Board president Vicky Flynn, after DiMaso repeatedly “butted heads with” county GOP chair Shaun Golden; Flynn wound up knocking off the incumbent in June’s primary.

So far, Republicans have yet to land a major contender to take on Kim, with only Mount Holly (pop. 10,000) school board member Will Monk and 2020 Senate candidate Tricia Flanagan, who took just 18% in the primary, declaring so far.

● OH-01: Businessman Gavi Begtrup, who finished a distant fourth with 10% in Cincinnati’s nonpartisan mayoral primary in May, says he’s considering a bid against Republican Rep. Steve Chabot in Ohio’s 1st Congressional District. So far, Democrats have yet to land a notable candidate here.

● OH-11: Democrat Shontel Brown is out with a positive TV spot featuring an endorsement by Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge’s mother, Marian Saffold, the second ad she’s released featuring an endorsement from a mother: Last month, Brown released a commercial that showed her own mom speaking on her behalf.

Saffold favorably compares Brown to her daughter, saying that she’ll “continue her legacy in Congress.” Fudge’s mother also claims that she’s endorsing Brown, rather than Fudge herself, because “Marcia now serves in President Biden’s cabinet, so she can’t endorse in the race for Congress.”

But such an endorsement is by no means unheard of: Biden’s interior secretary, Deb Haaland, backed Rep. Melanie Stansbury in last month’s special election in New Mexico, and Trump cabinet secretaries Tom Price and Ryan Zinke endorsed their preferred successors in the races to replace them in Congress in 2017.

● Campaign Kickoffs: With the end of the second quarter behind us, we’re once again seeing the influx of campaign kickoffs that we usually do in early July of every odd-numbered year. By waiting until now, candidates can avoid having to file an extra fundraising report (which, if it only covers a short timespan, can prove misleading), though some who launch amid the holiday weekend risk getting overlooked during a time when grilling beats out scrolling. But we’re here to round up every important announcement we can get our hands on.

● MD-02: Progressive activist Brittany Oliver, who runs an advocacy group called Not Without Black Woman, has launched a primary challenge against Democratic Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, saying, “The district is diverse and the representation on the Hill needs to reflect that.” Maryland’s 2nd Congressional District, located in the Baltimore suburbs, has in fact grown steadily more diverse in recent years and is now home to a 49% white plurality, with 35% of residents identifying as Black, 7% Latino, and 5% Asian American. Ruppersberger, who is white, has regularly faced primary opponents during his two-decade career, though he’s never won renomination with less than 73% of the vote.

● MT-02: Former state Sen. Al Olszewski, who unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination for governor last year and Senate in 2018, kicked off a bid for Montana’s new congressional district on Thursday. While the state’s new map has yet to be drawn, Olszewski seems to think he’ll wind up in a primary with former Rep. Ryan Zinke, since he crashed out the gate attacking Zinke—who served in Donald Trump’s cabinet—as insufficiently Trumpy.

On the same day, state Rep. Laurie Bishop also joined the race, making her the first Democrat to do so. A number of other potential candidates in both parties are still considering and may be waiting to see what the district lines look like before deciding.

● NH-01: Freshman state Rep. Tim Baxter has announced a bid for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, making him the second notable Republican in the race after Marine veteran Julian Acciard. GOP lawmakers in the state capitol have telegraphed their intention to make this district, currently represented by Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas, more favorable for their side in redistricting.

● NY-12: Voting rights advocate Maya Contreras has joined the primary for New York’s 12th Congressional District, solidly blue turf based on Manhattan’s East Side that has seen competitive primaries in each of the last two elections. She joins nonprofit founder Rana Abdelhamid in the race against Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who has said she’s seeking re-election after a tight 43-39 escape in last year’s primary.

● NY-23: Steuben County GOP chair Joe Sempolinski has entered the race for New York’s 23rd Congressional District, which is open—to the extent that it survives in its current form—thanks to Republican Rep. Tom Reed’s retirement following an accusation of sexual misconduct. But with Democrats likely to control the fate of New York’s next congressional map, it’s eminently possible that the 23rd could wind up significantly bluer or be outright eliminated and upend the plans of Republican politicos.

● TX-24: Marine veteran Derrik Gay kicked off a bid against freshman Republican Rep. Beth Van Duyne on Tuesday, making him the first notable Democrat to do so. Gay, now a tax attorney, has not run for office before but says he’s been involved in Dallas-area campaigns. Van Duyne won a close election last cycle by defeating Democrat Candace Valenzuela 49-47, but her fellow Republicans will be eager to shore up her district, which Joe Biden carried by a 52-46 margin.

● WA-08: Army veteran Jesse Jensen, who held Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier to a shockingly close 52-48 margin last year, has announced he’ll try a second time. Jensen’s performance came as a surprise because he was little-known, got badly out-spent by the incumbent, and attracted no major outside support from the likes of the NRCC yet managed to do slightly better than Schrier’s very prominent 2018 opponent, former state Sen. Dino Rossi. This time, though, Jensen faces intra-party competition from attorney Matt Larkin, who was the GOP’s nominee for attorney general last year and carried the 8th District 51-49 despite losing to Democratic incumbent Bob Ferguson 56-44 statewide.

Mayors

● New York City, NY Mayor: With most absentees now counted in the Democratic primary for mayor, Eric Adams leads Kathryn Garcia 50.5-49.5, and the AP has called the race for Adams.

Prosecutors

● Manhattan, NY District Attorney: Just before the holiday weekend, Tali Farhadian Weinstein conceded the Democratic primary for Manhattan district attorney to Alvin Bragg, a fellow former prosecutor who currently leads the race 34-30. While an unknown proportion of the 40,000 absentee ballots returned by voters remains to be counted, Farhadian Weinstein’s campaign said on Friday that a “majority” had been tallied, leaving an insufficient number for her to make up the gap.

Bragg, who served both as an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan and as chief deputy in the state attorney general’s office, ran as a reform-minded progressive generally to the left of Farhadian Weinstein, who heavily self-funded her campaign thanks to the wealth of her husband, hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein. As the Democratic nominee, Bragg will be the overwhelming favorite in the November general election, putting him on a path to become the borough’s first-ever Black D.A.